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For the Field of Therapy, Group Identity is an Unexplored Territory

By Michael Ventura - What might therapists contribute to understanding and healing the intense political polarization going on all around us? We came across an unusually prescient article by longtime contributor Michael Ventura that still offers a provocative perspective on our current cultural ferment. We've republished it—and provided an excerpt in this blog—in the belief that, in some ways, it still seems as relevant today as when it first appeared 10 years ago.

Dealing with Ongoing Discomfort as a Perpetual Outsider

By Tazuko Shibusawa - I was born in Japan, but spent my earliest childhood years in Michigan with my family. Since World War II, the image of Asians as a model minority has held, with increasing numbers of immigrants from all over Asia. But we Asian Americans are under tremendous pressure to prove ourselves, and we continue to be on guard against outbreaks of racial hatred.

Confronting our Definitions of Wealth in the Therapy Room

The current economic crisis may be no more than a rather large bump in the golden road of endlessly self-renewing American prosperity. Still, it's hard not to have a sense of foreboding that, this time, things really are different. Perhaps this is a good time to revisit some of our basic assumptions about wealth---what it means to us as Americans, how it defines us as a people, how it influences the way we think about ourselves, about freedom, success, and happiness, about what we really want from life, and what the American Dream really means to us.